055 Brigade

The 055 Brigade was an elite guerrilla organization sponsored and trained by al-Qaeda that was integrated into the Taliban army between 1995 and 2001. Osama Bin Laden set up the brigade shortly after his arrival in Afghanistan in 1996, and it was a small unit of highly trained, highly motivated, and well-paid Arab mercenary fighters; 100 of them served in Bin Laden's security detail. It consisted mostly of foreign Mujahideen who had fought in the Soviet-Afghan War or elsewhere, and they were equipped with weapons left behind by the Soviets as well as those provided by the Sudanese and Taliban governments. al-Qaeda's procurement officers provided the brigade with satellite phones, night vision goggles, and even airplanes, and they helped reinforce regular Afghan members of the Taliban. The 055 Brigade had ties to Kashmiri separatists and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and it grew to have 3,000 members. During the Afghanistan War, their garrison in Mazar-i-Sharif was one of the US Air Force's first targets for bombing during the invasion in 2001, and some of the surviving 055 Brigade fighters escaped into Pakistan following the Battle of Tora Bora.